Abstract
There are two well-known photographs taken in 1945 that show the audience in a cinema (Fig. 6.1). The first photo shows the backs of their heads and them facing the screen at the front of the hall. The faces of the spectators are completely invisible, but the image on the screen showing the corpses stacked in rows is very visible indeed. The second photograph shows the same hall photographed from the front. The screen is not visible, but the faces of the spectators looking at the screen are very visible indeed. These faces would be even more visible if it were not for the viewers who try to hide from the screen and the images displayed on it. Some spectators cover their faces with both hands, some cover their eyes with one hand, some look down at their feet or somewhere on the floor, some hang their heads but look up at the screen from underneath their eyebrows, and others hold their heads in their hand they could not otherwise hold up their weary eyes and heads due to the distress caused by the shocking images before them (Fig. 6.2).
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Notes
- 1.
Rare Historical Photos. 2021. “German soldiers react to footage of concentration camps, 1945”. Rare Historical Photos, 23 November. https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/german-soldiers-forced-watch-footage-concentration-camps-1945/
- 2.
Izaokas was nominated for the European Discovery 2020 Prix FIPRESCI by the European Film Academy.
- 3.
Hannah Arendt (2012), a film that combines Eichmann’s trial with the facts of Arendt’s biography, was directed by German filmmaker Margarethe von Trotta.
- 4.
An excerpt from this unrealised version of the script, which included the episodes with the psychotherapist, was published in the press. See Matulevičius, Jurgis, Saulė Bliuvaitė and Nerijus Milerius. 2020. ‘Filmas “Izaokas”: Nerealizuota scenarijaus versija’. Nemunas. 8 (August): 25–26.
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Milerius, N., Narušytė, A., Davoliūtė, V., Brašiškis, L. (2022). The Erasure of War Crimes and their Visualisation in Post-Soviet Eastern European Cinema. In: Everyday Representations of War in Late Modernity. Identities and Modernities in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07135-5_6
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